Elephants Baby Blanket

The elephants baby blanket is finally finished, after months of effort :) I'm very happy with the result, and it will suit my Danish/Indian baby perfectly, I think. The yarn is Danish, from the island of Læsø, and the motif looks Indian (although Alice Starmore is actually a Scottish designer, but let's forget about that for the time being).

The finished measurement is 50 x 58 cm, to fit the pram.

I don't have the pattern, it's out of print, so I can't really say what my modifications are, but here's what I did:
In Starmore's design (which I just copied down from a photo), the background is 4 colors and the elephants 3 colors. Læsø Uldstue Klitgarn doesn't come in that many colors, so I couldn't find just that combination. Instead, I have 4 elephant colors and 3 background colors.

So then, I just knit a tube with 8 steek stitches, seamed through the steek a few times with the sewing machine, and cut it. Sounds easy. Then, a back-of-the-envelope calculation to find out how many edge stitches I should pick up with my gauge where 31 stitches x 33 rounds is 10 x 10 cm. My edge is different from the one in the pictures of the original Starmore design. I used the same pattern as in the main section, then just did some diamonds to make it a bit wider. Then, a k2tog, yo picot row, and then, knit the same pattern on the back. The front corners have m1, k1, m1 increases on every other row, the back corners have corresponding decreases on every other row. If I was to do this again (ha!), I would decrease a little more, as there was some surplus knitting in the corners on the back side.

Now came the difficult part. Or at least the part where I procrastinated for a good couple of months. The lining is corduroy, just cut to fit approximately, the edges closed on the sewing machine, and put between the layers of knitting. I seamed the knitting on to the corduroy rather loosely once, then permanently in every bind off stitch. An involved process, but really worth it in the end. Here's what the back looks like in the end:

One More Vest!

After my recent self-proclaimed success with the Thistle Vest, I've jumped straight to another fair isle vest. I must have been bitten by some kind of bug?

This one is made from my stash Noro Kureyon Sock, that I have been experimenting with earlier, but was never convinced the experiments were going the right way. So the new deal is fair isle, heavily inspired by Bohus patterns. I love the Bohus style, the only complaint being that the patterns only cover yokes or front panels. It looks beautiful, but it means you have to knit almost an entire sweater in plain stockinette! So I zoomed in on the color pattern itself, fusing and modifying different Bohus designs. I think it's going well so far:I really like the way the dusty colors blend but still stand out.

Thistle Vest

My thistle vest is finally done, and it turned out very close to what I had imagined. Many times, I can "see" exactly what I want to make, but it turns out to be different in reality. This one not so! I get compliments when I wear it.The beautiful flower pattern on the vest comes from Dale of Norway, and was originally published with the name Damask. Lots of people have since made their own versions, many with Kauni, so this is just one of them.

But because I am actually so happy with the result, I have written a pattern (describing just the stitch count and centering the flower on the front of the vest).
It will be available as a free Ravelry download shortly. Apparently, they have to link user names to designer names manually, and this takes time. I've waited some days already, so I assume it happens soon.

Thistle Vest

I have finally learned to knit fair isle. I didn't even know there was a specific technique for continental knitters! All my english and american books just show various diagrams of holding this and that yarn in this and that position. I didn't know none of that works for continental knitting, but what I could tell was how ugly my earlier swatches were. An hour or so with a Danish book worked wonders. At first I was sceptical. Holding one yarn over one finger and the other over two? But it really works, and is actually quite comfortable.

So then I just wanted to get straight to business. Well, that is the kind of business with only two colors, and not more than 7 stitches in one color. I still haven't figured out how to cross the yarns on the back without switching the skeins around, which I'm sure is not the way to do it.

I wanted a round and flowery pattern, so I was happy to find that Pinneguri's beautiful thistle pattern doesn't have more than 7 stitches of one color.

After some swatching (yes, indeed), I decided to cast on 288 stitches, which is 9 pattern repeats. I cast on with the dominant color (which in my case is an orange-blue-brown multicolored Kauni, I used a grey one as background) and tried a tubular cast on first, my new favorite for rib! But it really does not work for a two-color rib. It was too bulky, so in the end, I used a standard cast-on, and - IMPORTANT - one row of all knit stitches in alternating color, followed by the two-color rib proper. This way, bumps of wrong color are avoided.Then, after a few rows of rib, 28 cm of the pattern followedI have to admit that the blue color blends more into the gray background than I had expected. But, this is really just an experiment, so I guess that's ok. As you can see, I've started decreasing for arms and V-neck (more about that later - I'm using some numbers I came up with, so we'll have to wait and see how it works), with some stitches for steeking inserted. I've of course never made a steek, so in that respect, too, this is an experiment. In other words, don't worry about the colors when the whole thing may still fall apart later!